Do grognards have to be jerks?

[Dannager]

So, if I show a picture of a 4e Essentials book hanging from a nail in an outhouse with the caption of '4e: So Thick! So Absorbent!'* then I am allowed to laugh?

Yes.

You also might want to explain to me how that isn't intended to insult 4e. But you're still allowed to laugh if you find it funny.

How about a dragon flying over dung besmeared 4e players at a table with the caption: '4e Players: Better Targets Than Trolls!'?

Sure.

Again, though, maybe explain to me how that's not insulting 4e players. Good luck.

For you to find it funny does not make it funny

Sure it does. I don't think anyone actually has the ability to officially declare something funny, so clearly whether or not something is funny is left to the individual. And I find it funny, so it's funny. Maybe it's not funny for you. Which is kind of a shame. Laughing is fun.

- you were not the one that the dragon was pooping on in effigy.

Neither were you, unless you self-identify as an internet troll who spends his time regurgitating asinine complaints. If you do identify as one, then yeah, he was pooping on you. Take that.

It is like a WASP saying that he doesn't know why some folks find ethnic jokes to be offensive.

I should note that I'm also the sort of person who doesn't waste my time or energy getting offended by racial, gender-based, religious or age-based humor. And I think that, if you are the sort of person who gets offended by that stuff, maybe you might consider stopping.

We've unfortunately reached a point where the very idea of being offended has lost almost all its significance.

It is only funny if you are not the one that the dragon is pooping on.

Maybe. Someone might consider himself an internet troll and still find that funny. I mean, an truly dedicated troll certainly would.

The ad was an insult, intended or otherwise.

No, it wasn't.

And considering your own reaction to minor slights against 4e and 4e players I very much doubt that you would find such jokes, at your expense, amusing.

Those people are free to explain away their attacks if they feel like it. But if they're at my expense, then by definition they're going to have a hard time doing that.

Someone at WotC should have thought things through.

Absolutely. I do agree that WotC is guilty of overestimating the maturity of the tabletop gaming community. They should have seen this reaction coming a mile away.

 

[Ettin]

So, if I show a picture of a 4e Essentials book hanging from a nail in an outhouse with the caption of '4e: So Thick! So Absorbent!'* then I am allowed to laugh? Somehow, I don't think so.

It really isn't.

Don't ask me how I know that.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Yes.

You also might want to explain to me how that isn't intended to insult 4e. But you're still allowed to laugh if you find it funny.

It is an insult to 4e players, much as the dragon poop ad was an insult to folks who were complaining about 4e, some of whom had good points.

Sure.

Again, though, maybe explain to me how that's not insulting 4e players. Good luck.

Again, it is an insult to 4e players, as the dragon poop ad was an insult to 4e critics.

Sure it does. I don't think anyone actually has the ability to officially declare something funny, so clearly whether or not something is funny is left to the individual. And I find it funny, so it's funny. Maybe it's not funny for you. Which is kind of a shame. Laughing is fun.

Neither were you, unless you self-identify as an internet troll who spends his time regurgitating asinine complaints. If you do identify as one, then yeah, he was pooping on you. Take that.

No, I am identifying as a critic of 4e who was labelled a troll by WotC because I did not buy into their hype - a very big difference.

I will say that the mods on the WotC boards were fairly quick to take down some of the more offensive replies that the game designers put up in response to some criticisms, but some were very quick to label any criticism as a trolling, whether the criticism was justified or not. The mods should not have needed to curb the comments of WotC's own designers as much as some of the more vocal critics.

There was a reason that I never posted on the WotC forums, and that was the fact that some of the WotC folks were of an incendiary nature.

I should note that I'm also the sort of person who doesn't waste my time or energy getting offended by racial, gender-based, religious or age-based humor. And I think that, if you are the sort of person who gets offended by that stuff, maybe you might consider stopping.

Or maybe telling the joking bigot to shut up, even though I am a Caucasian. (Though of Irish heritage, which faced its own discrimination back in my great grandfather and grandfather's times.)

We've unfortunately reached a point where the very idea of being offended has lost almost all its significance.

The term is jaded. It is not a good thing. People should be offended when people are being offensive. It is how society advances.

Maybe. Someone might consider himself an internet troll and still find that funny. I mean, a truly dedicated troll certainly would.

No, he will find it funny that he got a reaction - not the same thing. It means that WotC fell for his game - not a good thing.

No, it wasn't.

Says a person that the insult was not aimed at.

Those people are free to explain away their attacks if they feel like it. But if they're at my expense, then by definition they're going to have a hard time doing that.

Exactly! So you are saying that it is alright as long as you are not the one insulted.

Absolutely. I do agree that WotC is guilty of overestimating the maturity of the tabletop gaming community. They should have seen this reaction coming a mile away.

Or, more accurately, they failed in limiting their own immaturity. 'These people are saying we are wrong! Let us have a dragon poop on them! That will be funny! Hur, hur, hur!' Because, let us be honest, it was literal potty humor. Boy, is that mature.

*Removed as needlessly offensive* TAG

Feh.

The Auld Grump

 

[TheAuldGrump]

It really isn't.

Don't ask me how I know that.

I won't. I really don't want to know!

Any book being used as toilet paper would offend me on some level. Even romance novels that have been stripped for return. I do not want to see any gaming book, that could have some happy player leafing through its pages, being used for either that or for starting campfires.

The original joke was a cartoon drawn by one of the artists for Nelson's History of the War, who felt that the propaganda magazine was worthless for anything else. Unfortunately, doing comics and illustrations for the magazine was what kept him out of the trenches, so while he hated the magazine he kept doing their illustrations.

Another illustrator, Paul Nash, once complained that "I am not allowed to put dead men into my pictures because apparently they don't exist."

By the end of the war over 90 artists were employed doing propaganda for the magazine.

What the heck is it with me comparing WWI and edition warring lately?

The Auld Grump, not old enough to remember the Great War.

 

[Maggan]

It is an insult to 4e players

How come? It's the book that's at the pointy end of the stick, not 4e players. If anyone feels the books are not worth more than using as a hygienic supplement, why should I as a 4e player feel insulted?

I am not the book, after all.

/M

 

[racoffin]

This is so not a productive conversation. Then again, considering the original post and thread title, that's hardly surprising. I kind of wish we could stay away from edition wars, but they've once again broken out. Not as nasty as other times, but it certainly is edition versus edition right now.

Indeed. Given the way this thread started out, it couldn't go any other way.

Many of the comments I'm reading seem to boil down to "Things aren't insulting if I didn't mean them to be" and "stop being insulted by things people say. It's that easy."

There are entire threads that read exactly like this, where posters will shine their halos and swear that they are only debating the issue and that the other guy is the rude one. Suffice to say there are rude people on both sides (and in the middle) of all of these threads, and just because they aren't being profane or screaming doesn't make it any less nasty.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Indeed. The "fans" were not speaking in unanimity. Those of us who were generally satisfied with 3e, I suspect, simply remained silent (and thus unnoticed).

I remember being absolutely shocked upon the announcement of 4e at the number of people who suddenly came out of the woodwork to denounce 3e and praise 4e for "fixing" its many "problems." Or at least, it seemed that way to me. In reality, I'm sure they'd been there all along...I just didn't pay any attention to them or their complaints, because I was content with things as they were.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

Different people want different things! The problem here is that we don't take that into account more often around here.

 

[Umbran]

Rhetorical question: How many of you would like a moderator to go over the last half-dozen pages of this thread, and give a half-week vacation from the boards to anyone found to be edition warring?

I think about a half-dozen of you who should currently be worried that I am considering doing just that. If that's what's required to teach you how holding on to and continuously rehashing these old hurts is hurting the conversations you are in, and the community you are part of, then the work will be well worth it.

 

[Demmero]

Re: the Red Dragon cartoon....

Maybe it's just me, but I look at that cartoon as a satire of the gaming community at that time. What I get out of it is that extremists on both sides are basically inconsequential and bring nothing productive to the community. I don't see how the makers could have made it more obvious exactly whom they were targeting* ("High Syncophant" and the kobolds' annoying "We looooooove you!"; an actual troll...on the internet).

I remember how surprised I was at the outcry from "insulted" 3.5 fans at the time, and I'm borderline shocked that it still elicits such prickly responses from some folks today. Are we as gamers in general really that thin-skinned?

********************************

For means of full disclosure....

I didn't even notice that the cartoon dissed fawning 4E fanboys until someone pointed it out on an MB. In retrospect, I'm thinking that's because I was on one "side" at the time: the bit about internet trolls rehashing the same old (often erroneous) stuff struck a chord with me.

Now it's three years after that cartoon came out and I'm playing D&D 3.5 again. In '07-'08, I was pro-4E. I liked some of what I heard about the forthcoming editions, had misgivings about other changes, but I thought, "TSR and Wizards have never put out an edition of D&D that I didn't enjoy; 4E will be no different." I was wrong.^

So in a way, I was one of the fawning 4E fanboys. Does the cartoon feel insulting to me now? No. Why not? Partly because I recognize the truth (for me, at least) in that cartoon's message that the extremists on both ends of the spectrum bring nothing positive to gaming or the gaming community. Mostly, though, it's because I recognize that I'm not one of the people the cartoon is "insulting"--I'm somewhere in the middle of the two extremes, as are 99.9% of other gamers.

* Admittedly, I haven't spent hours and hours in deep contemplation on this. To me, it's just a satirical internet cartoon and not worth a whole lot of my time or energy.

^ Wrong for me anyways; YMMV. Mostly, I just wanted to admit that I was wrong about something, because I agree with the posters who believe that the failure to admit that you're wrong (even to oneself, even on a single point of contention) is a serious problem in the edition wars and in MB forums in general.

 

[catsclaw227]

WotC may have meant the Dragon Poop ad to be funny, but it came across as anything but. The folks who think that it was insulting to the 4e naysayers? They have a right to feel insulted - it was very poorly thought out. And a lot of the lead up to 4e felt that way, whether it was intended as an insult or not.

EDIT: Sorry Umbran, I hadn't read your post yet. If you wish I can edit my post.

I DM 4e and play in a Pathfinder game. I like them both, they each have their own flavor of both awesomesauce and poopstink. No game is perfect for everyone.

I just watched the ad again and I have to admit, unless the 4e naysayers were posting the kind of stuff that the internet troll in the ad was representing, there really is no reason to get offended. They were NOT satirizing a reasonable discussion about the positives and negatives of 4e or 3.x, they were saying that the vitriol spewing nerd-rage rants (and there certainly were some) didn't matter to them.

They also satirized and poked fun at mindless 4e fanbois too.

It came across as selective criticism and looked like people searching for more reasons to be even angrier about the release of 4e and subsequent end of support to their game.

Were any role-playing farmers offended that one of their kind got pooped on? I didn't see any posts about that.

But I do recall posts where people compared the release of 4e to killing their dog and rape. I did not see any posts from the 4e camp that did a similar thing.